free-for-all week: get up close and personal with an insect

Hi all! We're still recovering from National Poetry Month around here! If you participated in napowrimo, leave us a note in the comments and tell us how it went for you!

In other news, although you may have had your share of prompts the past four weeks, we couldn't resist just one more... Our free-for-all this week is a Moth-based writing prompt: a little research, a little examinaiton, a little poetry. Here's what you are invited to do:

1. Choose an insect: a moth would be great, but there are so many more! ladybug, ant, beetle, stink bug...
2. Google your insect. Gather all the information you can: names of body parts, full-color photos, mating habits, gestation periods, habitat, folk lore... Pull together every bit of information you can about your chosen insect.
3. After you have all your information, write a poem from the viewpoint of the insect.
4. Stuck? Need some inspiration? Try starting your poem with "When I was a..." or "I am a..."
5. Of course, as with all of our prompts, these are just suggestions. And this is just a free-for-all. So, as long as your poem is insect related, anything goes. Post a link to your poem all week long. Come back Sunday to see what new poet and new poem we have chosen for the next month's discussion.
   

call for poems

It's time for your own Moth-inspired poems!

From today until next Sunday, you can post links to your poems in the comment section. Be sure to visit all your fellow poets and check out their creations!

Next weekend, we'll post a free-for-all (any suggestions on something you all would like to do or see?). Then, on Sunday, May 10 (Happy Mother's Day!), we will have a new poet and poem up for discussion.

Now for your own poems...

Hello, hello. Here we are. Please excuse the delay in posting!

We hope you enjoyed Ivy Alvarez's Moth! This week, it is time to do some writing of your own. For those of you participating in the NaPoWriMo madness, consider this one more prompt to keep your muse on his/her toes!

First, read the poem again. It is deceptively simple. Take notes on what the poem stirs up in you and write your own poem. What draws you in? What are your "dry wings?" Do you court danger? When have you found yourself "against the glass/ wings pressed towards the light"? You might even try taking a line from the poem (be sure to credit your muse!) and writing from there.

When we post again next week (on or about April 26), we'll ask you to share what you wrote. In the comments section of that post, you can publish a free write, draft or finished piece, or you can publish a permalink to something on your own blog.

PS: While we do ask that you save your poems until next week, do feel free to leave comments in this post about how you have been inspired by Moth. And do hop over to Ivy's site to purchase your very own copy of Mortal!

moth, by ivy alvarez

A new month, a new poem! This one is from the collection mortal by Ivy Alvarez (poem reprinted here with her permission).

Read it again and again. Read it out loud as many times as the people around you will tolerate. Send it to your friends. Think about the words, the sounds, the images. Share your thoughts about it in the comments section of this post, just as though you were sitting around a circle at a "real life" poetry group. Discuss the piece 'til your heart's content. (Next week, we'll offer a prompt based on the discussion.)

moth

pale white body against the glass
wings pressed towards the light

I am a pulse
I cannot stop beating, beating
so drawn to the alien thing

there is no time to care
the light beckons and I am there

call me ephemeral

soon the crickets will sing their cacophony
and the grass will have my dry wings

///

And don't forget about our collaborative sestina here. Contribute some lines?

A collaborative sestina! Why not!

We have something special in the works...we really do. In the meantime, we thought it might be fun to try some collaborative poetry--even more fun if we try a collaborative sestina!

The form appears complicated, but can be broken down pretty simply: 6 stanzas of six lines each. Each stanza uses the same six end words, in a different order in each stanza.

To be clear:
Stanza 1: 123456
Stanza 2: 615243
Stanza 3: 364125
Stanza 4: 532614
Stanza 5: 451362
Stanza 6: 246531

To begin, we will need people to contribute our first six lines. Whatever words each person's line ends with will become our six repeated words. So give it some thought!

To keep it simple, each time you contribute a line, please cut and paste the previous lines into your new comment.

Off we go!

call for poems

So, did you pen a sestina? Were you pensive about writing in a form? Whatever your pencil was inspired to produce after reading and discussing Denise Duhamel's Delta Flight 659, we can't wait to see it!

From today until next Sunday, you can post links to your poems in the comment section. Be sure to visit all your fellow poets and read their penultimate poetry!

Next weekend, we'll post a free-for-all (be sure to stop by and see the surprise!). Then, on Sunday, April 5, we will welcome National Poetry Month with a new poet and poem up for discussion.

Time to write your own poems!

First, Carolee and I would like to thank everyone who participated in the great discussion of Denise Duhamel’s Delta Flight 659 last week! The exchange of ideas by a community of varied thinkers is exactly what we had in mind when we envisioned this site!

Now, on to the prompt. After so much discussion, it’s clear there are myriad ways to be inspired by this poem. Will it be a mock sestina using only one end word? A celebrity poem? What poem would you write to help deal with your fears? Perhaps you want to try your hand at a traditional sestina. If so, here’s a quick link.

Whatever Duhamel’s poem inspired in you, write it! And be sure to come back next Sunday, March 22, and post a link to your poem. And, hey, if you have an idea for a prompt related to this poem, leave your idea in the comments section this week. No poems, please! Save those for next week!